The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold

Luke taught in the Sunday-school, and grandpa had once actually been superintendent, she was not allowed to go there, simply because the children were rude and dirty. But she went to morning chapel, sitting alone with grandpa on the red cushions of the broad pew, that creaked every time she moved; Uncle Mark and Uncle Luke sat away up in the gallery with the rude and dirty Sunday-school children; grandma seldom went to chapel; the ministers called to see her instead. Once to her amazement Uncle Luke had ascended the pulpit stairs, looking just as if he was walking in his sleep, and preached. It seemed so strange, and afterwards the religious truths which she had been taught somehow lost their awfulness and some of their reality. On Sunday evenings she celebrated her own private service, in which she was preacher, choir, organist, and congregation. Her extempore prayers were the secret admiration of grandma, who alone heard them. Adeline stayed up for supper on Sundays. When the meal was over, grandpa opened the big Bible, and in his rich, heavy voice read that Shem begat Arphaxad and Arphaxad begat Salah and Salah begat Eber and Eber begat Pelag, and about the Ammonites and the Jebusites and the Canaanites and the Moabites; and then they knelt, and he prayed for them that rule over us, and widows and orphans; and at the word "orphans," grandma, who didn't kneel like the others but sat upright in her rocking-chair with one hand over her eyes, would say "Amen, Amen," under her breath. And after it was all over Adeline would choose whether Uncle Mark or Uncle Luke should carry her to bed.

      Grandpa died, and then grandma, and Aunt Grace (who was not an aunt at all, but a cousin) came to stay with Adeline and her uncles, and one day the shutters of the shop were put up and not taken down again. Adeline learnt that Uncle Mark and Uncle Luke were going a long way off, to America, and that she was to live in future with Aunt Grace in a large and splendid house full of coloured pictures and statues and books. It seemed odd that Aunt Grace, whose dresses were rather shabby, should have a finer house than grandpa's, until Uncle Mark explained that the house did not really belong to Aunt Grace; Aunt Grace merely kept it in order for a rich young gentleman who had fifteen servants.

      * * * * *

      When she had recovered from the parting with her uncles, Adeline accepted the change with docility. Long inured as she was to spiritual solitude (for the closest friendship that can exist between a child and an adult comprises little more than an affectionate tolerance on either side, and certainly knows nothing of those intimate psychic affinities which attract child to child or man to man), she could not, indeed, have easily found much hardship in the conditions of her new life. One matter troubled her at first, namely, that Aunt Grace never prayed or read the Bible or went to chapel; nor, so far as Adeline knew, did anyone else at the Abbey. But she soon became reconciled to this state of things. For a time she continued to repeat her prayers; then the habit ceased.

      The picture-gallery, of which she had heard a great deal, fascinated her at once. It was a long but not very lofty apartment, receiving daylight from a hidden source, hung with the finest examples of the four great Italian schools which flourished during the first half of the sixteenth century: the Venetian, a revel of colour; the Roman, dignified and even sedate; the Florentine, nobly grandiose; and the school of Parma, mysteriously delicate. Opportunity serving, she spent much of her time here, talking busily to the madonnas, the Christs, the martyred saints, the monarchs, the knights, the lovely ladies, and all the naïve mediæval crowd, giving each of them a part in her own infantile romances. When she grew older, she copied—who shall say whether consciously or unconsciously?—the attitudes and gestures of the women; and perhaps in time there passed into Adeline, by some ineffable channel, at least a portion of their demure grace and contented quietude. There were pictures also in the square library, examples of quite modern English and French work, sagaciously chosen by one whose critical faculty had descended to him through four generations of collectors; but Adeline had no eyes for these. The books, however, gorgeous prisoners in glass, were her good friends, though she might never touch them, and though the narrow, conventional girl's education assiduously bestowed upon her by her aunt in person, stifled rather than fostered curiosity with regard to their contents.

      When Adeline was about nineteen, her guardian became engaged to be married to a middle-aged farmer, a tenant of the Abbey, who made it clear that in espousing Aunt Grace he was not eager to espouse Aunt Grace's protégée also. A serious question arose as to her future. She had only one other relative in England, Mr. Aked, and she passively accepted his timely suggestion that she should go to London and keep house for him.

      Chapter XVI

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      On the Wednesday evening Richard took tea at the Crabtree, so that he might go down by train to Parson's Green direct from Charing Cross. The coffee-room was almost empty of customers; and Miss Roberts, who appeared to be in attendance there, was reading in the "cosy corner," an angle of the room furnished with painted mirrors and a bark bench of fictitious rusticity.

      "What are you doing up here?" he asked, when she brought his meal. "Aren't you cashier downstairs any longer?"

      "Oh, yes," she said, "I should just think I was. But the girl that waits in this room, Miss Pratt, has her half-holiday on Wednesdays, and I come here, and the governor takes my place downstairs. I do it to oblige him. He's a gentleman, he is. That polite! I have my half-holiday on Fridays."

      "Well, if you've nothing else to do, what do you say to pouring out my tea for me?"

      "Can't you pour it out yourself? Poor thing!" She smiled pityingly, and began to pour out the tea.

      "Sit down," Richard suggested.

      "No, thank you," she said. "There! If it isn't sweet enough, you can put another lump in yourself;" and she disappeared behind the screen which hid the food-lift.

      Presently he summoned her to make out his check. He was debating whether to tell her that Mr. Aked was ill. Perhaps if he did so she might request to be informed how the fact concerned herself. He decided to say nothing, and was the more astonished when she began:

      "Did you know Mr. Aked was very ill?"

      "Yes. Who told you?"

      "Why, I live near him, a few doors away—didn't I tell you once?—and their servant told ours."

      "Told your servant?"

      "Yes," said Miss Roberts, reddening a little, and with an inflection which meant, "I suppose you thought my family wouldn't have a servant!"

      "Oh!" He stopped a moment, and then an idea came to him. "It must have been you who called last night to inquire!" He wondered why Adeline had been so curt with her.

      "Were you there then?"

      "Oh, yes. I know the Akeds pretty well."

      "The doctor says he'll not get better. What do you think?"

      "I'm afraid it's a bad lookout."

      "Very sad for poor Miss Aked, isn't it?" she said, and something in the tone made Richard look up at her.

      "Yes," he agreed.

      "Of course you like her?"

      "I scarcely know her—it's the old man I know," he replied guardedly.

      "Well, if you ask me, I think she's a bit stand-offish."

      "Perhaps that's only her manner."

      "You've noticed it too, have you?"

      "Not a bit. I've really seen very little of her."

      "Going down again to-night?"

      "I may do."

      Nothing had passed between Adeline and himself as to his calling that day, but when he got to Carteret Street she evidently accepted his presence as a matter of course, and he felt glad. There was noting in her demeanour to recall the scene of the previous night. He did not stay long. Mr. Aked's condition was unchanged. Adeline had watched by him all day, while the nurse slept, and now she confessed to an indisposition.

      "My bones ache," she said, with an attempt to laugh,